Archive of Broadway Actress Dorothy Tierney and Her Theatrical Family
Various Places: 1899 to 1917. A collection of scrapbooks, manuscripts and ephemera belonging to Dorothy Tierney, a Broadway actress who was the wife of film star Robert Keith, and the daughter of actors John and Gertrude Tierney. Includes a scrapbook of letters and ephemera documenting a touring romantic vaudeville sketch titled "Drifting" in which Tierney starred; a scrapbook and diary documenting Tierney's time at the Mount De Sales Academy, a boarding school for girls in Maryland; a manuscript notebook containing notes and essays by Dorothy's mother, Gertrude Tierney, in 1899 and 1900, including a humorous essay describing the experiences of an actress on the road in California in the year 1900; and a collection of miscellaneous ephemera including theater programs and theatrical contracts belonging to Robert Keith. Includes the following:
Vaudeville Scrapbook. Various Places: 1916 to 1917. Notebook binding measuring 8.5 x 6.76" containing 53 pasted in ephemeral items. Mild creasing and bubbling to leaves. A scrapbook relating to a touring romantic Vaudeville sketch titled "Drifting," starring Wallace Scott and Dorothy Tierney. Includes a few programs, two small theater broadsides, a broadside titled "Rules Governing All Artists and Acts Playing the Great Northern Hippodrome," two photographs, including one of a "Scott & Tierney" marquee, brief letters from theater managers and others, many telegrams, numerous clippings, and more.
School Scrapbook and Diary. Catonsville, Maryland: 1910 to 1911. Notebook binding measuring 8.5 x 6", containing 55 ephemeral items as well as 71 pages of pencil manuscript. A diary and scrapbook kept by Dorothy Tierney while a student at Mount De Sales Academy, a private Catholic boarding school for girls in Catonsville, Maryland. Ephemeral items include programs for recitals, theatrical performances, and other school events, letters from friends, a gum wrapper, baggage tags, and more. Wear to edges and spine ends, hinges cracked. The diary records daily life at the school--classes, friendships, gossip, religious life at the school, a religious retreat, recitals, performances, and more. Towards the beginning is a several page description of a "French Play" in which Tierney participated, foreshadowing her Broadway career:
"We are all excused from studies, practice etc, so we are fixing up the playroom for the play. It looked perfectly darling. Casey fitted my gown and hemmed it for me...I wore Marcias Phipp's black skirt adn waist and Helen Heinz's high heeled satin (black) slippers. My own silk stockings, Katherine Burdett's belt and my cap and gown. I wore my hair in a pomadour and tied my curls with a ribbon in the back. The first time I went in (on the stage) everything was alright...when I got half way through my speech what should happen but the crazy old penant had to come tumbling down right in my face...I heard all the girls laughing and I almost forgot my part and came near breaking down...I came in for the last I made a slip from the far door over to Jeanne. Oh those high heels and rugs and polished floors. Well you can guess the rest. The girls fairly screamed and I felt so embarrassed..."
Tierney also writes about her wish to go to the theater, as well as her infatuation with actor George Anderson:
"Why doesn't providence do something so I can see or hear from George. We had the recital and I stumbled all over myself my hands and legs just shook until I thought I should die. Sister Angela gave us a treat of peanut butter sandwiches and bananas...I was going to have Judy throw my card up on the stage on Saturday or else send it around to George by an usher but then I changed my mind as I don't think it would be very nice."
She writes about her relationships with other girls at the school as well as with the teachers:
"The girls at our table are worse than ever they are beginning to talk about Casey now I didn't say a word but if they keep it up I will fight good and hard...I found out some nasty things Rachel W. has said about me but I don't care but I wouldn't go down to camp with her."
"I asked Sr. Angela if I could go to town on Saturday and we had a fuss and nearly came to blows. I told papa when he called up and he immediately took up for Sr. Angela. Well we had a fuss about which I felt terrible afterwards...I cried some more about Sr. Angela...I cried again about Sr. Angela for the third and last time. Believe me I am getting sick of crying about her and am going to stop it."
The diary also contains much about a society dreamed up by a group of girls called "The Creeks and Apache Indians of the Mt. de Sales Woods." Apparently, Tierney and her friends built a camp in the woods near the school and held meetings there. In addition to diary entries about the group, there are several pasted in notes and letters related to the society:
"I swiped some of St. Regis' red ink and took it in the Chemistry room and wrote notices to the girls of a counsil on Sunday. I washed Ethel's hair and dried it all by hand I didn't touch it with a towel...Last Sunday also the hammock broke down at camp and we put up a swing at least half way and on Monday there was a barrell, a chain on that, a box on that, and yours truly on top of it all but I got it up anyway...We had a funeral in the morning and we made a graveyard the cutest little thing you ever saw. We have tiles with inscriptions on them for tombstones. Ethel's son is 'Potomac Jackson' (a disjointed doll) my son is 'William Knickerbocker Penn' (the head of an Indian ornament) Cora's is 'Deerslayer'...Sr. Lucia & Sr. Jane Francisc came down and visited us they came through the secret passage but they crawled under the fence to get out it was soo funny to see them."
Gertrude Tierney Journal. No Place of Publication: 1899 to 1900. Journal binding of quarter morocco with black boards measuring 8.5 x 7", containing a few pages of handwritten notes and copied verses, together with two essays totalling 14 pages as well as a few ephemeral items and handwritten pages laid in. Covers worn and detaching, first 24 pages excised from notebook. The notebook belonged to Gertrude Millington Tierney, Dorothy's mother and a touring stage actress herself. The first essay, titled "The Night Stands--Los Angeles Cal" was written by Tierney in Sacramento in 1900. It humorously documents the experiences of an actress on a grueling schedule, performing nighty in different towns. Included are descriptions of the frenzied train trips, hotel stays, rehearsals, and performances:
"a theatrical company sometimes succeeds in getting a car to themselves which is intimate for the other passengers for an actor takes up more room than most people he must occupy three seats at least. One for his baggage one for himself and one for his feet. And even then he isn't satisfied being satisfied isn't in his like--so for his own private edification he groans, complains and kicks as much as possible. Besides kicking and complaining there are numerous pleasant ways of amusing onesolf on a train--you can knit dear Aunt Abigail a pair of purple socks. You can gaze dreamily out the window and reflect on your past. You can gourmandize half a dozen bananas and see how many times you can hit the bald spot on the comedians head with the peel..."
"The next thing in the programme after arriving in town is probably a rehearsal...you start out in quest of the theatre which is usually situated about a mile from your hotel...the stage manager appears...He concludes at last he doesn't like the way you have been singing...and guesses you'd better try it over several times 'till you get it right, so you and the rest of the travel stained ladies with smutty hands and cinders on their nose lift with an 'I'm doing this because I have to' air to the footlights and proceed to inform rows of empty seats and the local manager..."
"Toward the end of the last act you unfasten your clothes and remove your make up to gain time--and before the final curtain has quite shut out the gleam of the footlights a general stampete is made to get off the stage. After a brisk trip to the depot in the rain and slugh--you scramble breathless and frozen to the train not to sleep no for sleepers are not to be had..."
The second essay is six pages and titled "Soliloquoy." It records the thoughts of an actress pining for a man while exhaustedly waiting for rehearsal to begin. It begins "Nine O'Clock so it is and rehearsal at ten. O! how I wish I could get one more nap...I do want just five minutes more sleep--O' dear I believe if I should get a letter from a certain person this morning, I'd be the happiest being on Earth."
Other: Fourteen ephemeral items, mainly programs and playbills; a small collection of letters and cards sent to Tierney, including two love letters from Harry J. Anslinger, later the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, sent to Tierney from Venezuela in the 1920s; four contracts made between Robert Keith and the Actors' Equity Association; a ledger kept by Keith in the 1960s containing 25 pages of entries; and a 1916 letter bearing red lipstick residue, apparently having been kissed, and marked on the envelope "letter carried on first stage appearance" Item #9280
Price: $1,250.00